Cáer’s Dream

In dream, she fished with silk of swans,
Baited her hooks of hammered bronze

With rainbow strips of cuttlefish,
And might have paused to make a wish

Or prayed her prayer for daily bread
Before she cast the humming thread

Into the seven seas of years,
Into the music of the spheres,

Into the transcendental streams,
Into the mystery of dreams—

For all we know is that she caught
By that frail line the sleeping thought

Of he who stirred and dreamed her face,
The supple form, the swan-like grace

Of lovely she who sighed and rolled
Away in sleep, as dumb and cold

To him as any cobblestone,
As thoughtless as a marrow bone.

O dream-born tales, to us confess
Our wants in rightest words that bless,

And ease those waking to a day
Of mortal hurts and heart’s dismay.

—Marly Youmans